


Bare

by flaming_muse



Category: Glee
Genre: Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-28 11:19:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flaming_muse/pseuds/flaming_muse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt and Rachel get a surprise package in the mail from Tina.</p><p>set in canon, episode tag for and spoilers through 4x12 (“Naked”), with no spoilers beyond</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bare

Kurt slides open the door to the apartment a little warily, listening for a moment for the sounds of smacking lips or bodies before he steps inside. He’d walked in on Rachel and Brody wearing far fewer clothes than he thought was appropriate for a communal couch the other day, and although Rachel had promised him as she buttoned up her shirt that it wouldn’t happen again he isn’t so certain of her remembering in the heat of the moment that it isn’t worth an extra few seconds of caution when he gets home.

Fortunately, today the apartment is free of moaning - god, he wishes he could scrub his brain of that memory as easily as he could clean the couch; there are some things he just doesn’t need to know about Rachel, no matter how much he loves her - and he sighs in relief. He wants some tea and some peace after a long day; he doesn’t want to have to hole up in his room with ear plugs and his white noise machine and pretend he doesn’t know what’s going on a few yards away. He’s happy for her, but it’s still uncomfortable, and not just because his own bed is empty. Some things are private.

“Kurt!” Rachel says happily from the kitchen. “Welcome home. You’re just in time; I’m making tea. Would you like some?”

“Yes, please,” he replies with feeling. He closes the apartment door behind him.

“Lapsang souchong or French chamomile?”

“Lapsang souchong,” he says, because he has way too much work to do to be soothed to sleep before dinner.

“Okay.” She smiles at him over her shoulder before turning away to grab a second mug, and he smiles back. _That’s_ what living together is supposed to be about, shared meals and friendship; he isn’t Rachel’s roommate so that he can know most of the details of her sex life, even ones she doesn’t tell him directly.

As she fusses over the drinks, he sets his bag down on one of the chairs and shifts the pile of mail from one arm to the other to slide off his coat and unwrap his scarf from around his throat.

“I had a great day,” Rachel tells him, pouring out the hot water and taking the mugs of tea to the table. She sits in her usual spot and puts Kurt’s tea at his own. It feels awfully grown up, in a way, for them to have ‘usual’ spots, but the thought also makes his heart lift. They _are_ grown up, adults on their own, finding their ways. It’s daunting but exactly what he wants.

“Oh? What happened?” Kurt joins her there and puts the mail down to go through it.

“Well, you know I have my solo voice instruction on Tuesdays?”

“Mmm hmm.” Kurt sorts bills into the little wicker basket for them to go over on the weekend, magazines and interesting catalogues into a neat pile for him to look through later for inspiration, and junk mail and boring catalogues directly into the recycling.

“Well, when I was leaving, Professor Dickenson stopped me and told me that he could hear the work I was putting in on the upper part of my range,” she says proudly. “Professor _Dickenson_. I know you’re new to NYADA, but even you must have heard the stories about him.”

“I’ve certainly heard them from you,” Kurt tells her. He frowns at the large brown envelope at the bottom of the pile. Turning it over, he finds it’s addressed to the two of them from Tina. He grabs the antique brass letter opener from the basket to slit it open.

“Exactly,” she says, bouncing her tea bag in her tea a few more times before removing it and setting it in the little hand-painted sushi plate Kurt had found at the flea market last week. She reaches for Kurt’s mug and does the same for him, and he smiles his thanks at her. She knows he doesn’t like his tea steeped to death, either. “So you know he doesn’t praise anyone. Supposedly the nicest thing he’s ever said to a student is sufficient. Sufficient, Kurt! And he told me he could hear the work I’ve been putting in!”

“That’s great, Rachel. All of the endless scales you’ve been singing around here have paid off.” Kurt sets down the opener and pulls out the contents of the envelope. He reads the note first, written on a sheet of binder paper in Tina’s looping handwriting. _Look what you guys left behind! No muffins at a bake sale for us this year; we have stud-muffins instead!_

“I _know_ ,” Rachel says and takes a sip of her tea. “Of course, then he followed it up saying that he thinks my breath control is lacking, but who cares about that? He told me he can hear me improving!”

“Do you - “ He begins as he lifts the page away from the other item in the package, but his words choke in his throat. It’s a calendar. A calendar with bare-chested men on it, men he knows, men he went to school with, men he worked hard not to look at in the locker room - His eyes go wide and shocked as he realizes that one of those chests he actually knows quite well, and he shoves the calendar back into the envelope and says in a strangled voice, “Oh, no.”

She leans over the table to see, her brow furrowing. “What is it?”

“You don’t want to know,” he says and holds the envelope tightly shut. He feels the calendar flex under the pressure of his fingers.

“Kurt! Are those compromising pictures of you and Adam?” Rachel asks with excitement and holds out a hand.

“What? No!” Gaping at her, he pulls the envelope back toward his chest. “And nothing has happened for there to _be_ compromising pictures. I barely know him. No matter how long I know you I will never understand how your mind works.”

“Is it something awful, then?”

“Sort of.” Kurt’s voice is weak, because it isn’t like it’s something hideous. It’s just surprising and unwelcome.

“Let me see. Blackmail is a sign of status,” she tells him, her tone soft like the idea’s supposed to be comforting, and wiggles her fingers toward the package again. “It shows people have noticed you enough to be jealous. Honestly, I’m a little surprised it happened to you before me, but I’m secure enough in myself to be happy for you.”

“It isn’t blackmail, Rachel,” he replies with a roll of his eyes.

She cocks her head at him. “Then what is it?”

Kurt knows that even when she’s not wearing those stiletto boots he can outrun her, but she has a frightening amount of determination. Unless he wants to flee this very minute into the cold, early evening gloom, looking for a random dumpster in which to throw the calendar without her seeing, there really isn’t any way for him to keep it from her.

He hands it over wordlessly and slumps down in his chair.

“Let’s see...” Rachel slips the calendar out of the envelope and completely ignores the note to look at the glossy, bright photographs instead. “Wow,” she says with obvious approval as she flips through the pages. Kurt steadfastly looks at the wall over her shoulder. He can’t look. He doesn’t even want to be tempted to look. “Well, I have to admit that Puck’s brother’s muscle definition is _very_ impressive, though it doesn’t compare to Brody’s. Also - “ She squints at one of the pictures. “ - I think some of these are Photoshopped. Which obviously Brody is not.” She snaps the calendar back shut and slides it across the table toward Kurt.

“I don’t want it.” Kurt flips the calendar over so that he doesn’t have to see so much skin - especially Blaine’s - in front of him, but the back has smaller pictures of the images inside, and it’s not any better. He snatches up the envelope and puts it flat on top of it.

He’d put his hands there to cover it, too, but he doesn’t want to touch it if he doesn’t have to, which is ridiculous, since it’s not like it’s harmful. He just spent all of his pubescent life not supposed to look at his friends in a sexual way (or at least not if they could notice), and now being at NYADA where he can and is starting to do so more freely without being threatening or threatened has made everything that much more confusing. A part of him _wants_ to look, because attractive men his age are, well, attractive, and even if he doesn’t want to sleep with any of the guys at McKinley he doesn’t have to pretend he only notices the much older, unattainable ones anymore.

But then, of course, _Blaine_ is on the calendar, which is another reason he doesn’t want to look at it. Blaine, whose body Kurt knows almost as well as his own. Blaine, whose skin was the first Kurt was allowed to touch every inch of. Blaine, whose chest Kurt has caressed and kissed and come on... and whose body now should be kept firmly behind clothing in his sight, because it isn’t his to touch anymore, and Kurt doesn’t want to have to see it and think about how things used to be. He can’t. It’s too painful. It’s too complicated. He doesn’t want things to be complicated.

“We could put it up in the bathroom,” Rachel says, wrapping her hands around her mug. “But it might make Brody uncomfortable.”

“We wouldn’t want that,” Kurt mutters darkly. “ _He_ shouldn’t be uncomfortable.” He can’t help but think of Brody walking around naked in the apartment, Brody reorganizing some of Kurt’s books on the shelves to make room for his own, Brody _living there_ because Rachel had asked him on the spur of the moment without asking _Kurt_.

But they’ve had this fight, and what’s done is done. He washes the sour taste from his mouth with a sip of tea.

“You’re probably right that if you hang it up in your room it could be awkward if you have a boy of your own in there,” Rachel says. “Or should I say _when_ you - “

“It would be awkward, anyway,” he cuts her off. “Blaine’s in it.”

She shrugs and flips her hair behind her shoulder. “It’s not like you didn’t already know what he looks like, and the pictures are good. He’s perfectly attractive.”

“That’s sort of the problem, Rachel.”

“Adam is attractive, too,” she assures him. “I’m sure you wouldn’t be distracted.”

“Stop,” he grits out. “I mean it is weird to have a calendar of my half-naked ex-boyfriend on my wall, whether or not I bring home a new boyfriend.” His stomach flutters a little at the thought, both in nerves and in anticipation. A new boyfriend is a possibility. It’s an option. He isn’t going to be alone forever just because Blaine broke his heart, and it’s thrilling. “Even _you_ have to see that.”

Rachel’s eyes narrow like she’s going to argue, but she finally sighs and says, “Fine. But is it really that much weirder than looking at your old photos?”

Kurt frowns at her. “I don’t look at old photos. And I don’t have any like...” He gestures at the covered calendar.

Her eyes widen in shock. “You two dated for as long as you did and didn’t engage in at least a little sexting?”

“Rachel Berry!” he says, gaping at her. He can feel the color rising in his cheeks in his embarrassment. He might have a few very nice shirtless pictures of Blaine stored somewhere on his hard drive, but they were from _pool parties_. He’s not sure if he’ll be sorry or not when he’s old that he doesn’t have a post-coital picture of Blaine’s face with his hair all rumpled and his smile so soft, but he doesn’t, and he works hard not to think of it so the memory will fade like it should.

Rachel reaches out and pats his hand. “I’m just asking,” she says. “I mean, you’re both healthy, attractive young men with needs, and although I know you’re more of a prude I thought Blaine might have encouraged - “

“Let’s not talk about Blaine’s needs,” Kurt says shortly. His chest is starting to feel tight, as it always does when he is faced with how poorly he clearly met Blaine’s so-called needs, since Blaine barely waited until he was gone to try to get them met somewhere else.

She squeezes his hand and says with soft apology, “I didn’t mean it that way.”

Kurt shakes his head, pulls away from her grip, and puts the calendar away. He catches sight of Blaine’s chest again, his stomach, the gorgeous cut of muscle at his hip that Kurt had liked to trace with -

He shuts off that train of thought. It’s not his anymore to think about. It’s not a gift of love that makes him feel special to be allowed to touch. It’s not a sign of Blaine’s acceptance of and joy in him. It’s just Blaine’s body, entirely his own, not Kurt’s at all. It has nothing to do with him.

It’s almost a slap in the face to be forced to see it, though. It shouldn’t be, but it is, because it used to be something just for him, and now Blaine can do whatever he wants with it. He doesn’t have to reserve it for Kurt. He can show it to whomever he wants, to any boy from Facebook up close and personal, to everybody at McKinley for them to drool over on their walls. 

Kurt had thought that Blaine felt differently. Blaine had once almost come to blows with Sam about getting too sexual on stage, after all, and he’d ultimately agreed with Kurt that their first time together should be special, not rushed. He’d made the sight and touch of skin feel important, even when it had stopped being new for them. But maybe that was all for Kurt. Obviously Blaine had wanted to move further and faster in their physical relationship, not just having sex sooner but being affectionate in public, and maybe he’d been more modest for Kurt’s sake, too.

Now he doesn’t have to be.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kurt says, pushing the envelope to the center of the table with the tips of his fingers. “But I don’t want to see him like that.”

What had been so incredibly special to Kurt, a private honor that had made his heart fill to bursting, doesn’t mean the same to Blaine at all.

Maybe their relationship was always destined to fail, because in wanting things to be romantic and meaningful Kurt had just been holding Blaine back.

Maybe it really is for the best.

“Kurt.” Rachel watches him, and her brows draw together. She knows him too well, and he can’t hide that he’s upset. “They’re just pictures.”

“I know.” He pulls his hands back and anchors them on his mug. He re-anchors his heart, too, catches it from where it’s been knocked askew and puts it back where it belongs. "It's okay. I'm okay. I was just surprised."

“Well, it isn’t every day you are sent pictures of half-naked muscular young men in the mail,” she agrees.

He has to laugh a little. “That, too.” He takes a sip of his tea.

"Then what?"

Kurt shakes his head; Rachel's so much more comfortable with the idea of nudity than he is. She didn’t hesitate long before sleeping with Brody. She seriously considered appearing topless in that art film. He knows she won't understand.

Kurt knows he is different from most of his peers. If he wants to date, he will probably have to change, because people won't understand why it's important to him. But right now he can't let it all go. Right now it still means too much to be close to someone. A smile makes his eyes flutter, a kind word makes his heart pound. To be touched, to touch, to see and be seen… it's so much more to him than a means to an orgasmic end. It's letting someone in, someone _wanting_ to be let in by him, and he has had so little of that in his life that he can't stop valuing it.

He wonders if getting involved with Adam will help push him along. It's not realistic to think that Adam will put so much importance on the meaning of private intimacy, but maybe Kurt won't, either, now that it isn't his first time, his first boyfriend, his first love. Kurt knows what to expect now, knows what he likes and what someone else might like from him. It's not all new.

And it won’t be new to Adam, either. Adam is more sure of himself than Blaine, and he might be more vocal about being unhappy instead of hiding it and ultimately hurting them both; he might give them a chance to work through it. Kurt shouldn't judge his future prospects based on his past.

"Kurt," Rachel says more firmly. "I am your best friend. You're supposed to talk to me when you have problems."

"How would you feel if Finn were in there?" he asks, skirting the issue.

"Oh." She blinks and thinks for a moment before drawing herself up. She flips her hair behind her shoulder again. "I would be fine with it. I would be happy he was feeling confident in himself."

He isn't so sure that would be true, but he holds his tongue and settles for a disbelieving lift of his eyebrows.

"Besides, it's tasteful," she continues, touching the envelope. "As much as something from high school - " She says those two words the same way he might talk about clothes coming from Wal-Mart. " - can be. Tina did a good job."

"I'll have to take your word for it. I'm too traumatized to look with a critical eye."

Her tone goes maternal and maybe kind of pitying. "By a bunch of shirtless boys? You're gay. You shouldn't be traumatized; you should be jumping for joy looking at them."

“They’re wearing stupid costumes,” Kurt reminds her. “And I _know_ them.”

“So? I know them, too, and I can happily admire their bodies. I really don’t know what your problem is.”

Kurt looks down at the envelope and the relatively tame calendar within, sighs, and says, “I don’t, either. It’s Blaine, I guess. It's fine."

“It’s only going to get easier, Kurt," she says with the same mixture of sympathy and encouragement she always has around the subject of him and love. "You’re moving on. There’s Adam. There’s all of New York. You’re on the right path, the one toward love and laughter and amazing double dates with me and Brody.”

He nods, acutely aware of the dull ache in his heart he tries to ignore most of the time, the loss that he can’t stop feeling. But Blaine was his first love; it makes sense to miss what they had, even if he’s accepted that it’s gone. “I know. I am. I just wasn’t expecting it.”

“Life is full of surprises,” Rachel tells him. She takes a pensive sip of her tea and then smiles brightly. “Like Professor Dickenson praising my hard work!”

Kurt has to smile back at her, because as much as she can drive him up the wall he’s never been more grateful to have her in his life just the way she is than he is in New York. He wouldn’t be lost without her, because he’s learning to find his own way, but he’d sure be a lot more lonely. He’d feel a lot less well understood.

“Tell me everything he said,” he says and picks up his mug.

She opens her mouth, then hesitates with her fingers on the calendar. “Are you sure about the bathroom?”

“If you want it, the only place you can hang it up is _your_ room. I’m not going through my moisturizing routine being stared at by Artie in a leprechaun costume or Joe in a bunny suit. My mud masks will crack from the horror.”

“Fine.” She taps her hands on the envelope and pulls it towards her. “Maybe I should. Brody feeling a little competition might be good for him.”

Kurt pushes back in his chair and goes to fill a pot with water for their dinner. “Your mind is a terrifying place.”

“It’s really a shame Sam is wearing a shirt, though. He’s the only one who can really give him a run for his money.”

When he looks over, he sees her flipping through the calendar and examining the pictures once more. He turns his back so that he doesn’t have to see Blaine go past, and he tells himself that by the time Blaine’s picture rolls around this year he won’t care so much.

“Just think," she continues. “If Tina had come up with the idea last year you could have been in here. What do you think? Mister July? Or February? Either way, red is a good color on you.”

Kurt’s fairly certain he wouldn’t have been asked or would have been relegated to a leprechaun costume like Artie, and he finds himself wondering if Blaine would have posed bare-chested if they were still together, whether he would have wanted to.

There’s no way to know.

“I think I would have preferred to be a creative consultant,” he replies, setting the pot on the burner. “Those costumes are ridiculous. They could all look so much better if someone took the time to style them.”

“Oh, and you could have helped oil them up,” Rachel says with a little clap of her hands. “Good idea! No wonder Tina organized the shoot. We all could have helped!"

Kurt can feel his cheeks heating at the suggestion, because he’s just not used to being able to touch swaths of bare skin of people who aren’t Blaine. And doing it with the Glee Club guys would have been awkward at best.

"I almost feel like we missed out," Rachel says, her expression shifting into something more mournful.

"No," Kurt tells her, not just because he doesn’t want the opportunity shooting the calendar would have afforded but because opportunities in general haven’t yet passed them by. They’re in New York now. She has Brody, and he has... options. He squares his shoulders and says firmly, “We haven’t missed anything.”

He might never be as free with his body as other people are, but he’s still changing. He’s growing up. He’s getting used to this new life with its new freedoms. He doesn’t have to steal glimpses in the locker room or fall back on the only person who has loved him. He doesn’t have to worry about anyone else and what they’re doing.

He gets to make his own choices and go at his own pace. He gets to wear as many layers as he likes and remove them where, when, and with whom he chooses. He gets to decide, without doubt, without guilt.

Just as Blaine’s body isn’t Kurt’s anymore, neither is Kurt’s Blaine’s.

**Author's Note:**

> Reminder: I am spoiler-free! Please do not spoil me! :D
> 
> [This work has been translated into Italian!](http://www.efpfanfic.net/viewstory.php?sid=1620512)


End file.
